Plant germplasm resources are the plant materials containing useful inheritable characters of actual or potential value. Generally speaking, plant resources include cultivated and wild plants. China is a megadiversity country. A great lot of different complex climate environments in China such as dryness, wetness, clearness, clouding, shade, plain, hill, mountain, and so on, have gestated many Chinese endemic special plants.
Some of them have special genes, such as resistance to drought, chilliness, disease, pests, and saltness etc, elite quality, high yield characteristics and so on.
There are 470 families、about 3 7000 genus、more than 30 000 species of lichen, fern、seed plants in China. Special species in China involve 200 genus and about 10 000 species. Plant resources in China are conservated in situ and ex situ, by means of reforestation, regrassing, natural protection zones, arboreta, campus, parks, and institutes, etc.
National Crop Gene Bank in Beijing, built in 1986, has 3200m2, two long-term rooms (T=-18℃±1℃, RH<50%) with the capability 400,000. There are more than 340,000 accessions in long-term banks of the National Crop Gene Bank of China, involving 35 families, 192 genus, 725 species. Among them, 80% are native to China.
Up to now, there have been more than 210 main tree species for artificial forestation in China. Among them, there are more than 120 species for reforestation of barren slopes, deserts, and stony mountains.
There are about 800-1000 Chinese traditional medicine plants, which were mainly conservated in situ and ex situ.
The application of plant germplasm in China in plant biotechnology were reviewed on the following aspects: (1)Core germplasm construction by molecular marker technology (2)Plant germplasm preservation by biotechnology (3) Plant germplasm reproduction and industrialization by biotechnology (4) Elite gene discoverfrom plant germplasm by biotechnology (5) Plant germplasm in China and gene engineering technology.
At last, some problems of plant resources in China were put forward.

• Qing Fu Chen(Institute of Plant Genetics and Breeding, School of Biological Technology and Engineering, Guizhou Normal University)